Acer Ferrari One 200 Review - More than a Netbook

Introduction, Specs, and Packgaing

Ferrari - best known for their expensive high-performance road machines. Acer - best known for their value positioned computer products. So what happens when you combine an expensive car brand with a company known for making rather inexpensive PC systems?

Today we are taking a look at the Acer Ferrari One 200 netbook. It's an attractive 11.6" netbook that sports a stunning Ferrari red design that is sure to attract a lot of attention. But is that attention warranted or is stamping a netbook with a high-performance car brand the tech equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig?

The Acer Ferrari One 200 definitely took me by surprise, and I think it may be one of the more interesting netbook options out there if you're looking for something more than the traditional.

Specifications

As
far as the hardware specifications go, the Acer Ferrari One 200 is
fairly well equipped for a netbook. With an AMD Athlon 64 X2 L310 dual
core processor, up to 4GB of RAM (the unit we received had 3GB), and an
ATI Radeon HD3200 GPU, this system should be able to handle some more
demanding workloads than your standard netbook.

The 11.6"
display with 1366x768 resolution is worth noting as it's an interesting
size that is reasonably high resolution for a small panel. We'll dig
into the display panel more later in this review, but let me just say
that it's quite surprising.

There is also support for an
ATI XGP using the XGP connector located on the side. Not sure how many
people will be using this, but it's there in case you want to do some
more intensive graphics work or 3D gaming.

Now for the
stuff that is absent...

There isn't an optical drive,
which will make creating backup discs a challenge unless you have a USB
optical drive. Bluetooth is also not a feature on the Acer Ferrari One
200, which is fairly standard these days on Intel based netbooks.

Sadly,
HDMI is no where to be found on the Ferrari One 200 which is probably
my biggest complaint with respect to these specs. With a GPU that is
more than capable in handling HD content, it's a shame that there is
only an analog VGA output. Since most of you won't be using the XGP,
it'd make more practical sense to have HDMI instead.

Packaging

The packaging on the Acer Ferrari One 200 is surprisingly minimal.
Inside the box you have the computer, power adapter (not pictured),
some documentation, and a soft cloth to polish your Ferrari. There isn't
a single disc of any sort included, which follows the logic that the
Ferrari One 200 doesn't actually have an optical drive.